Which is the heart of Chennai?
The bunch of us who post on the Chennai Metroblog keep in touch behind the scenes via an active mailing list. Sometimes the mailing list gets so active that it takes considerable agility to duck against the steady onslaught of witty darts. Earlier today, either due to the Krishna Jayanthi holiday today or due to the sense of wellness that the long weekend must have provided, we were up in arms trying to vote for the area that would qualify as the heart of Chennai.
Most of us kept confusing ‘heart of the city’ with ‘centre of the city’ and came up with suggestions. Various areas that we tossed around are
-Nandanam Signal (assuming centre not heart)
-Greams Road (assuming centre not heart)
-Nungambakkam
-T Nagar
– R.K. Salai
The other possibilities that we did not get around to are Gopalapuram / Alwarpet / Teynampet.
‘Centre of the city’ would mean the geographical centre point from where the outermost areas of growing Chennai are of comparable distance.
‘Heart of the city’ on the other hand, would be the place where most people of Chennai congregate for commercial as well as personal purposes. In other words, what the Town was to Old Chennai.
Update: Chenthil came up with a much much better definition of the heart of the city that I’d like to share. He said “Heart is the place which if shut down will bring the city to [a] stop” – he added that, to him, the heart is still George Town.
What’s your answer to the question?
“Sometimes the mailing list gets so active that it takes considerable agility to duck against the steady onslaught of witty darts.”
Aye, this part was nice :D
Pondy Bazaar.
Mylapore.
Chennai’s spiritual heart.
But how soon will it become yet another high-rise area that just happens to have a temple in the middle :( ?
one has to go back to chennai’s roots to find the real heart. one would investigate where chennai as an entity began, before it started gobbling up the nearby villages as it expanded. one can also consider where the power resides. all this points to only one place: fort st. george (i hope nobody ever changes this one’s name) and hence by extension georgetown.
If heart is used to refer to a place where blood is pumped then the heart of chennai ought to be pudupettai.
sheky, lavanya dint mean area where most blood is pumped into the streets, and don develop misconceptions based on pudupettai :D.